Page 100 of Hellbound

Tivan’s crooked smile was giddy as he began to twist. The gallery screamed for her blood.

Snap! Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

The final thread broke.

The severed rope whipped through the pulleys.

Wooden planks fell into darkness, as did Tivan.

His scream was cut short by the wet sound of spikes traveling through his body.

A shriek left her lips as half of her body dangled over the edge of a spike pit—her only savior being the dagger that staked her to the floor.

Tivan was a bloody heap, pinned like a bug on display.

It was nonsensical to her, how one eye looked toward her, twitching—the other lolled in a different direction, impaled by a spike close enough to touch.

The silence lasted exactly one heartbeat.

Then the gallery exploded into cheers, not for Tivan—he was dead. But for her, as if they had no apparent memory of ever wanting otherwise.

Fair-weather loyalty like that almost made her understand Karsan.

She fisted a trembling hand around the hilt of the dagger.

The light contact caused pain that blacked out her mind. She swallowed the cry before it could leave her throat.

One motion. Don’t think about it, Vornaya cooed.

Ksenia chuckled darkly. Don’t think about it.

She wrenched the blade free.

Something feral and involuntary left her mouth, and she hated herself the moment it escaped. Blood pulsed hot over her tunic, spreading from her shoulder and down her side to seep into the floor below.

Her eyes clenched shut as heaving and ragged breaths spilled from her lungs. Yet no amount of air could tame the pain.

She rolled away from the edge, propping herself up on three limbs. Spit dripped from her mouth as nausea rose in slow waves.

Bloodlust and blood loss were one and the same.

She retrieved Tivan’s broadsword with tingling fingers.

At the edge of the spike pit, she stopped. Her shadow fell over his corpse. One eye stared up at her, and she studied him.

Thirty competitors had entered the trials.

Twenty-nine had succumbed.

Only she had survived.

Steel met flesh.

She hacked, chipping the blade against the iron spikes, until there was a stump and a head separate from it.

She straightened. It was heavier than she expected, or perhaps she was unused to the weight of victory.

Karsan leaned over the wooden railing with the bright, avid expression of a child peering into a fishpond—delighted and waiting to see what his new weapon would do next.